Although Nicolas Cage has been known to star in just about any kind of project when attempting to pay off his now-infamous expensive tastes, he has also starred in some great movies that have gotten overlooked. These films include some dramedies of the early 2000s, such as Matchstick Men, The Weather Man and Lord of War. 2005’s Lord of War came from writer and director Andrew Niccol, who had previously penned the Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show and told the story of Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage, who became a gun runner and quickly rose to become a wealthy and notorious illegal arms dealer of worldwide conflicts.
Variety has revealed that a planned sequel from Niccol is now set to start filming in Morocco locations next March. The sequel’s producer, Karim Debbagh of Kasbah Films, has expressed his zeal to start production now that the writers’ and actors’ strikes have ended and allowed their movie to move forward. Debbagh told Variety, “We’re trying to cover four or five African countries, such as Libya, Egypt, Senegal and Mali and several countries in the Middle East, and we’ve almost found everything in Morocco. Casablanca itself is so diverse that you find areas that look like Senegal and others that are very luxurious like a California neighborhood, and if you’re looking for places that look similar to Libya, Yémen or Syria, you can find them in and around Marrakech.”
The Lord of War sequel will also star It and It: Chapter Two‘s Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgård as Cage’s son. The plot will reportedly involve “a father-son twist, with Skarsgård playing Orlov’s son, Anton. In the Lord of War sequel, Anton tries to top his father’s wrongs instead of stopping them as he launches a mercenary army to fight America’s Middle East conflicts.” Debbagh also revealed the crew will employ 400 to 500 people, with 100 of them coming from the U.S. and the U.K. “The crew members in Morocco have become so well trained in recent years thanks to all the big movies that have come here to film and also the great schools that have opened and helped bolster this younger generation.”